Heard a Fly Buzz When Essay

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The fly is a gruesome image because flies gather around decaying corpses. However, while this image is startling, it is still shocking that the poet is not more in shock of dying, of being dead, or witnessing just a fly upon her death.

The poem consists of four stanzas, which include slant rhymes on the second and fourth lines. The lines alternate between six and eight syllables. Dashes in the poem force the reader to slow down and take time to read each phrase. The tone of the poem is lyrical but the message of it is somber. Dickinson uses a simile in the poem In the line, "The Stillness in the Room / Was like the Stillness in the Air" (2-3). This image is important because it reveals the poet's notion that there is nothing special that awaits us after death.

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The still air is a stark contrast to the airy, white light that many envision when they think of what happens at death. The poet is stating that nothing happens when we die, which is a disturbing thought. We find a metaphor when the poet says, "the windows failed, and then / I could not see to see" (16). The poet indicates that while she was alive, she could see things but in death, all is dark. The poem closes with the "blue -- uncertain stumbling buzz -- " (13) that separates the poet from the light. The poem concludes with the notion that death in not a glorious event but rather an empty one that closes in on a fly and its buzz, surrounded by blackness followed by nothing.

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